Chapter 9 Miz
9
MIZ
During the week following Kal’s closing night, I keep finding myself staring at the one wall of my treatment room where I have photos of my favourite patients: the retired flight captain in his eighties riding a bicycle again after a stroke. The construction worker with vertigo who is now a rock-climbing influencer. The MS patient who managed to walk unassisted for the qualifying distance of a clinical trial. I know it’s not the same thing, but it irks me that I can rehabilitate nervous and musculoskeletal systems but can’t figure out a real way to help Kal.
Other than text-spamming him with ironic affirmations and graphics, that is. Which might have amused him at first— When life gives you lemons, throw them at someone. That awkward moment between birth and death, etc.—but it’s probably got on his nerves by now. Does that stop me from googling for more while I wait for my next appointment? Nope. I need something to distract me from the reality that Kal’s chances of securing a new sponsor from schmoozing at one party are slim. Two Olivers don’t come around in a lifetime. I am really feeling the advantage of my passport, and it’s about as pleasant as wet wool. A text from Kal interrupts my GIF search.
Kal: I don’t think I should go anymore. To my parents’ thing in Jan. I better stay out the entirety of my visa, you know, in case—
I don’t bother to read the rest of the message. I call him immediately. “How about no?” I say, skipping the greetings. “Hell no. Do not talk like that. You are not missing that party. I did not suffer through all your old people songs for nothing. Even if it’s cutting it close, if your work permit is valid, it’s valid.”
“You never know. A border agent might decide only one month before expiry is not enough to readmit me.”
“By then, your situation will be different.”
“How do you know?”
I quit pacing and start rearranging the multicolour pins on a bulletin board instead, yanking them out and jabbing them back in in no specific pattern. “I just do.”
“It’s better if I tell them now so they have time to accept it.”
“Eske will flip like a pancake if you tell her you won’t be there.” I huff. I don’t have to ask whether Kal has run this by her because he knows better. “What if they moved the date of the party?” Kal laughs in response. “What? It’s been postponed twice.”
“This party isn’t getting postponed again. Everyone just wants to put it behind them as soon as possible.” He pauses. “It would be great if you could make it, at least.”
Eek. I sink into my office chair. “Haven’t decided when I’m going back to Ethiopia yet.” For a few years, we’ve been tossing around the idea of going back at the same time, ideally for this party, but nothing concrete. It’s probably been at least ten years since we were there at the same time.
Kal’s tone haunts me through the next set of patients so that, at lunchtime, I skip a group outing to Red Lobster to spend the hour scrolling the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship website instead of shelling endless shrimp. I go so deep into the nesting documents regarding work permits and sponsorships, my head aching from the bureaucratic lingo, that I don’t realize that Omar is behind me until he speaks.
“Passport renewal?” Omar says, peering over my shoulder.
I twist around, my swivel seat following. “No,” I say, tapping my finger lightly on the mouse to close the window. “A friend of mine is in a situation.”
“Kal?”
“I have other friends besides him, you know.”
Omar shrugs. “When I see it, I’ll believe it.” He isn’t wrong. Only Kal ever swings by my work. I don’t think Aimé even knows where the clinic is.
I sigh. “Yes, it’s for Kal.”
“If it’s for citizenship, marry him, naturellement ,” Omar says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
I level him with a deadpan stare. “You know what, Omar? Never mind. I thought you would be helpful, give me actual usable ideas.”
“What? I’m serious. Many people do that,” he says.
“Well, good for them. Getting married for papers is one thing I guarantee with a thousand percent certainty Kal would never, ever do.”
Omar jiggles his eyebrows. “Even when it is you?”
I snort. “Not for love or money. We cancel each other out. Come on, what other ways are there?”
“Okay, well, you insist on making it difficult…Let me see…” I listen as Omar dishes about other Bourne-level extremes to which people go to try to stay, and feel deeply thankful that Mom and I never had to go through all that. Our privilege was part of why it meant so much to Mom to help newcomers with their papers as much as she could. I wish I could ask her for advice for Kal, but then she’d assume there was something more going on between me and Kal, and she and I do not have the kind of relationship where we talk about the men in our lives.
My phone pings on my desk, and I grab it.
Daniel: What time do you get home today?
“Oh, fuck off,” I snap.
Omar gapes at me. “Excuse me?”
“Obviously not you.” I point at my phone.
Daniel has been so quiet the past week I convinced myself that he had insured the ring. I even confessed to Aimé that I still had the ring. To say that she was not pleased with me would be putting it mildly. She also wasn’t impressed by my Plan B: to just sell the thing and donate the funds to charity. She’s holding me to my original promise to return it to exactly where I found it, without much help with the how.
But I have to respond with something, so I quickly tap out a message. I’ll admit that it does bother me that even after two years of knowing me, the guy still can’t remember my very simple work schedule. Not that I’m about to refresh his knowledge.
Me: Sorry, going over to Mom’s to help with food prep.
At least this time, there’s some truth in my response. I am prepping something special for Mom’s retirement party this weekend: real actual doro wat. But by myself (with the help of Mama Adane on YouTube), at my own place, from scratch, carving up the whole organic chicken, chopping all the onions by hand, bubbling the spicy stew for hours on my balcony and everything.
“I’ll miss seeing Kal’s pretty face around here,” Omar says wistfully. You and me both , I think.
“It often doesn’t turn out so well, though, does it?” I say. I shove my phone in my desk drawer and nudge Omar off the treatment table, where he had perched himself, and pull out a fresh sheet covering for my next patient. “When people get married for papers? I doubt it is as simple as they expect it to be.” And Kal would never, right? Well, he did, in the play. As Antony, he married his rival’s sister for the sake of peace in the empire. But look at how that turned out.
Omar shrugs. “Less tough than the real thing, probably. No?” We blink at each other, clueless. “I guess you have to decide, what’s it worth to ya?”
“You mean to Kal.”
“That’s what I said,” Omar says, with a wink.
“Ha ha, beaucoup hilarious,” I say, with edge in my voice so he gets that this Kal-your-boyfriend shit is getting tired.